The largest Black Lives Matter page on Facebook is a hoax set up by a middle-aged white Australian man, CNN reported Monday.

“The page, titled simply “Black Lives Matter,’ had almost 700,000 followers on Facebook, more than twice as many as the official Black Lives Matter page,” their report read.

“It was tied to online fundraisers that brought in at least $100,000 that supposedly went to Black Lives Matter causes in the U.S. At least some of the money, however, was transferred to Australian bank accounts, CNN has learned,” the outlet continued.

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“Fundraising campaigns associated with the Facebook page were suspended by PayPal and Patreon after CNN contacted each of the companies for comment. Donorbox and Classy had already removed the campaigns,” CNN added.

Well, that’s some fine vetting by the people in the Black Lives Matter movement. Presumably, nobody asked why the guy who was running one of the biggest pages for the BLM movement on Facebook was asking them for money “to put another shrimp on the barbie for the revolutionary brothers, sisters and non-binary people in the movement to smash the white male hegemony.” (For those of you who even have to ask — and I unfortunately know there are people who will — no, that isn’t a real quote.)

“The discovery raises new questions about the integrity of Facebook’s platform and the content hosted there. In the run-up to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony before Congress this week, Facebook has announced plans to make the people running large pages verify their identity and location,” CNN’s article, written by Donnie O’Sullivan, read.

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“But it’s not clear that the change would affect this page: Facebook has not said what information about page owners it will disclose to the public — and, presented with CNN’s findings, Facebook initially said the page didn’t violate its ‘Community Standards,'” the article continued. “Only after almost a week of emails and calls between CNN and Facebook about this story did Facebook suspend the page, and then only because it had suspended a user account that administrated the page.”

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However, if one of the largest (if loosest) political movements inside the United States can’t even figure out that they’ve collectively been giving money to an organization that’s supposed to be for the oppressed African-American masses but is instead run by a middle-aged white man, I don’t know what social media organizations can plausibly do for them.

Patrisse Cullors, one of the co-founders of the movement, apparently talked to Facebook a few months ago and expressed her concerns about the page.

“We rely on donors who believe in our work and our cause and that money will be used in a way that is respectful,” Cullors said.

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Cullors, however, has a pretty significant platform from which she can speak. One would assume BLM supporters would be more likely to listen to her than a faceless Facebook admin. So, where was Cullors when Facebook didn’t listen to her? It isn’t mentioned.

“It’s important to remember the movement was organic and no organizations started the protests that spread across the country,” said DeRay Mckesson, a prominent black activist. “The consequences of that is it hasn’t been easy to think about authenticity in the digital space.”

Even though these BLM bigwigs and supporters are horrified, what could they possibly expect? After all, the left’s uncritical adoration of anything that can plausibly call itself “civil rights” has made it an easy target for scam artists. This is how Al Sharpton, the least plausible cleric since Elmer Gantry, continues to remain well-remunerated in spite of the fact he serves no discernible purpose except as a cultural ambulance chaser.

This seems to have been, more or less, how the unnamed Australian got away with running a scam Facebook group — along with associated accounts and webpages — for at least one year. Nice work, everyone.

C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between America and Southeast Asia. He became a staunch right-winger at the age of three: While watching a clip of Ronald Reagan, he told his mother (to her great horror), "Mom, I'm a Republican." Except for a brief, scarring and inexplicable late high-school dalliance with Ralph Nader and his ilk, he's never looked back.
Aside from politics, he enjoys literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, jazz, spending time with his wife, drinking coffee and watching Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties). He is the proud owner of a very lazy West Highland white terrier and an extraordinary troublesome poodle mix of indeterminate provenance. His proudest accomplishments include reading the entirety of Thomas Pynchon's published oeuvre.